FOUR STARS
by True Believer
Summary: When a mysterious murderer targets people associated with Bruce Wayne and Batman, which identity will the dark knight try to protect first? Please R
1. Four Star, Part 1

Author's Note: Quickly before the story I just had a little message. This is a Batman story based in comics continuity, but (hopefully) free of all complications that come with that. It's my intention not to revolutionise the treatment of Batman or anything, I've been reading Batman a lot recently because of the movie and I felt like nothing is self-contained anymore. It feels like you have to pick up several issues from six series and two trades to get a single issues' story. This is also hopefully a story that will satisfy on a chapter to chapter basis, not just be part of its own whole. Inspired by a conversation held in The Basement Tapes at comic book resources. If anyone has any reason to contact me, review or e-mail me at the address on my bio.

**Batman:  
Four Stars  
****  
**

Steam slowly made its way skyward from the polystyrene cup of coffee that was handed to Detective Renee Montoya. She took a sip as she walked up to the other detective on scene, Alan Gates.  
"Montoya." He greeted.  
"Gates," she replied with a nod, "what've we got?"  
Gates led Montoya through a few winding corridors in the apartment block and into a large and very expensive looking studio apartment. In the centre of the room was a large black coffee table, and draped across it with its legs dangling off the edge was the body of a familiar-looking naked young man. Gates pointed to the body, "Anonymous tip-off, probably from the killer, brought street cops to this location. When they saw the crap on the table they figured it was more a job for MCU. Nobody touched anything 'til you got here."  
Montoya, as acting head of Gotham's Major Crimes Unit and its most experienced detective, was the first to the scene of her unit. She walked over to the corpse and did a double take, "Is that-"  
"Bruce Wayne?" Gates interrupted, "sure looks like him huh?" He said with a smile.  
Montoya looked closely and spotted a scar on the man's chin, faded but still there. She looked again closely and saw that the hairline was different, "No, its not him. Any ID?"  
"None. You seen our boy's handiwork though?" Gates pointed to the table next to the pseudo-Wayne.  
Montoya looked and saw four exact star shapes that looked to have been made with a cookie-cutter, and underneath them in the manner of a film review was the word "Brilliant". The unsettling thing about these things, was the stars were made from what looked to be human skin, and the word was written in blood. Montoya bent a little closer to see more closely, "These what they look to be?"  
"Yep. As far as we can tell, we had the coroner in here a while ago and I had him take a look." Gates lit a cigarette and began to puff.  
Montoya looked at the body again, and saw only one star shape of skin cut from the direct centre of the man's chest, "They're not all his."  
"That was my guess too, some of them have slight colour differences."  
Montoya was silent for a long time, taking mental notes and using her mind's eye to photograph the crime scene, she was going to need to have this image in her head for months. The thought combined with a slight breeze from an open window across the room of the extravagant apartment made her shiver.  
"Want to know the most interesting little factoid?" Gates asked with a smile wrapped around his cigarette.  
"It gets any more interesting?" Montoya asked, raising an eyebrow.  
"Guess who owns this place," Gates finished and flicked his cigarette but out the open window and when no response was forthcoming, answered his own question, "Bruce Wayne."  
Montoya heard a slight tapping noise coming from behind the agent and saw a black finger on the window pane, "Good work Gates. Could you go and get the crime scene guys up here, I want this place done and dusted by sun-up."  
Gates nodded, "By the way, since Bullock is out of action I was asked by the commissioner to assist in this one. Hope you don't mind." his tone indicated he didn't expect a response and he removed a second cigarette from his packet and pinched it between his lips as he nodded and walked down the corridors towards the investigation's base camp.

Montoya turned around full circle in the room, taking everything in. Suddenly the lights dimmed and a slight thump noise behind her, merely for courtesy, told her she was no longer alone.  
"Leads?" the hollow voice asked.  
Montoya turned to face a shadow, or at least what she presumed was a man cloaked in one. She smiled and handed him the notebook she was using, which had everything Gates had told her and everything she'd observed.  
The shadow grew a limb from under the cloak, a black-taloned hand on the end of a dark grey arm took the pad and glanced at it. She assumed the Batman had total recall, as he seemed to simply blink as though taking it all in instantaneously and then handed the notebook back.  
"There's no obvious or direct evidence like footprints or a weapon yet," Montoya turned away from the shadow and walked towards the table, "we haven't checked the security system yet."  
"It's clean. Blank tapes. Possibly electrical interferance." The Batman commented, then looked directly at her through the lenses in his cowl as she turned to look at him, "The murder happened approximately four hours ago. The victim was killed somewhere else and moved here afterwards. The murderer came and went by the apartment's front door, which has not been interfered with. He was roughly five eleven and of even build from the slight imprints he left in the shag carpeting by the door. He used a scalpel and some sort of pattern to cut those stars and a gloved finger to paint the words. The body hasn't bled anywhere so we can assume that the stars were cut at an earlier point, perhaps while the victim was alive. The blood may have been the killers, but its more likely to have been drained from the body at another location and brought here like the body."  
Montoya turned back to the corpse, writing the information down on her pad. She didn't have any doubts as to his credibility, Batman wasn't called the world's greatest detective for nothing. She spoke as she furiously took notes, "Thanks, this'll be a great help."  
She turned to see an empty corner of the room, a black curtain blowing in the breeze from the open window.  
Montoya turned back to the corpse and muttered to herself, "Now I know how Jim Gordon feels."

-

The Batman stood on the roof of Bruce Wayne's apartment. At least that's how he thought of it, he'd only been there as Bruce Wayne, and only then to keep up his playboy image by taking several girls up there. He ticked through his list of foes in his head, thinking if there was any similarity to past cases. Nothing. Yet.  
"Oracle," he touched the small control that activated his radio connection and familiar woman's voice came from his cowl speakers.  
"Batman." She replied, "I got everything from the crime scene. You ok?"  
The Batman merely grunted in reply.  
"That was Church wasn't it?" Oracle asked, again getting no answer and carrying on knowing she was right, "Was he supposed to be there tonight?"  
"No." Batman replied, Thomas Church was one of the men the Batman employed to pretend to be Bruce Wayne every now and then, so it didn't look like Bruce Wayne disappeared every night until four am. Church was a particularly reliable employee too, and a decent actor.  
"Any ideas?"  
"None yet," the Batman leapt from the rooftop and fired a jump-line to swing in an arc around the spire of a nearby tower, "you have the snap shot of Montoya's list and the bug I placed on her, keep working and listening. Tell me if you or they come up with something."  
"Will do, Oracle out." she replied.  
The Batman let go of his jump-line and grabbed the edge of his cape, letting the amazing fabric billow out and slow his descent. He landed and rolled on the edge of a small apartment block, jumping out from his roll and into a run without losing speed. He leapt off the edge of the building and slid down the ladder on the building's fire escape before landing lightly in the dark alleyway he'd parked the Batmobile in. He slid into the car's cabin and set the car to drive him home, the first rays of sunlight were peaking over the horizon as the car went over the bridge and out of Gotham.

-

The next night the Batman hit the streets hard. His first stop was Gotham Central, to see Montoya. The detective was sat at her desk looking through the crime scene photographs of the previous night's murder. The Batman was on the fire escape and put an arm out in readiness to slip into the office when a voice sounded from Montoya's radio.  
"Detective, this is officer Weir. We've just spotted a suspicious-looking male matching the description you gave going into the Wayne Tower, carrying a large bag."  
"Don't do anything," Montoya shouted into the radio, "just wait for assistance. We don't want to spook this guy into running off."  
"Confirmed, watch and wait," the voice on the radio replied.  
Suddenly Montoya heard a heaving sound of burdened metal coming from behind her window and a fluttering sound like leathery wings from the rooftop beyond Central.

-

The Batman was at Wayne Tower in a matter of minutes. Luckily Old Gotham was relatively close to central, so a short trip across the rooftop express landed Batman on the window of the penthouse he'd used as a home base for some time to eliminate the commute into the city. Inside he saw a figure dressed in black from head to toe, including a black mask which was pulled up to expose the man's mouth. The man brought his gloved finger to his mouth and licked the remaining blood from it before pulling the mask back down under his chin. The Batman stealthily climbed in the window and came to stand directly behind the man, his cloak fell forward to enclose him completely and meld him with the shadows of the room.  
The man stood up and the mask moved a little, as though he were smiling. Suddenly he leapt forward and rolled, landing on the opposite side of the table he'd placed the body on. The Batman saw out of the corner of his eye that this time there where three stars and the body had two cut from its chest. There was something written in blood again, but the Batman didn't have time to read it before he was lunged by the figure in black.  
He threw his fists seemingly randomly at first, then the Batman noticed the man was doing a practised form of stage fighting he'd learnt during the months he'd spent learning the actor's craft to become Bruce Wayne. He retraced the steps the man had taken in his mind and put the full sequence together, predicting the next blow and ducking under before spinning around and taking the legs from underneath the slightly smaller man. The man rolled to his side and then flipped back onto his feet, showing himself an accomplished acrobat. The Batman saw him take a deep breath before deftly leaping through the open window, landing in a handstand on the ledge outside the window before allowing gravity to take him in an arc that would surely have taken him through the window of the floor below. A sound of glass breaking confirmed his suspicions.

-

"Detective Montoya!" Officer Weir shouted over his radio.  
"Go ahead," came Montoya's reply.  
Weir and his partner looked dumbfounded at the windows of the Wayne penthouse over fifty floors up before shouting back to Montoya, "The Bat's just entered the penthouse, I think I can see them fighting."  
Montoya said nothing while she thought for a few seconds, "Screw it. Get up there and get me a sicko in chains."  
A figure dressed entirely in black leapt through the window and landed in a handstand on the wide ledge under the penthouse window before arcing down into the window of the floor below.  
"Christ! You see that?" Weir asked his shocked partner.  
"Looks like the Bat's got trouble. Call it in."

The Batman reacted instantly and followed only a few seconds after the killer. He jumped through the window and twisted about, firing a jump-line that swung him back into the floor below and through another separate window. He didn't care about smashed glass, and it was his building anyway.  
He switched his cowl's lenses through the spectrums to infra-red and saw the heat trail of the killer leading through the door and onto the central corridor. His steps were far apart, he was a good runner. The Batman followed, but by the time he'd got into the corridor after him the killer's trail had gone cold. The floor in the corridor was carpeted and was already warm enough to block the heat traces of the killers steps, unlike the linoleum in the computer room behind him. The Batman cursed his own building design before turning back on himself and stalking back to the broken window where he saw that somebody up there was looking out for him. On one of the shards of glass by the door was a small sample of blood.

-

Author's Note: Hope you all enjoyed that one. The Story will continue in the next chapter, and yes I know that that isn't very self-contained. But what I'm intending to do is more to write a story that's fun, has suspense and mystery, and you don't have to have read a thousand other stories to get it. Something I think is missing from today's comics (bar Invincible which is brilliant). Also please review, tell me what you liked and what you didn't like, and what essential elements should be in every chapter. I decided that every chapter needs a spot of conversation, some interesting description, mystery and suspense, and a good fight scene. Tell me what you think! Oh, and read my other stories too because I like to think people still read them. I'm off to work on chapter two, expect it soon.


	2. Four Star, Part 2

Author's Note: Hope you all liked chapter one. I really enjoyed writing it, and I hope the reviews I get tell me you guys loved reading it too. I didn't put any legal stuff in the first chapter, so just pretend I did. I don't own Batman, or Montoya or Gotham. I guess I own the Reviewer as I like to call him, but I'm not sure anyone would want that sick freak. I'm trying to continue this in the spirit in which it was started, uncomplicated Batman kicks ass, takes names, solves creepy crimes. To start with I was going to write this as a six or seven chapter story but it feels like it's going to end in the next chapter or so, but I'm having so much fun I may write another. Oh, and if you haven't, go see Batman Begins. That's got nothing to do with this story or even the next one, I just like the film. Anyone wondering why Batman and Montoya have long conversations I've read many different versions of Batman, mine speaks minimally and cooperates with the police as they could have a different view on the case and solve it before he does. He only speaks to her when she's alone as he's trying to keep the urban legend reputation going, and being seen by a huge crime scene team isn't helping that. And yes, I am alive. So after another lengthy note, let us begin.

**Batman:  
Four Star**

Part 2

Montoya sat down on an expensive and comfortable chair in the Wayne Tower executive penthouse, belonging to a Mr. Bruce Wayne. Opposite her on another coffee table similar to the one she'd been staring at last night was a naked dead body, and another quote. This time there were three stars, and underneath the word "Mediocre" was written in blood. Montoya sat and gathered her thoughts and theories together as she waited, slowly the room seemed to revolve around her as the time passed and the investigation of the body wound its way to the conclusion. Soon she was alone in the apartment, she heard the door swing shut and a dark figure came in and leaned on the doorframe to the room she sat in. Detective Gates, her temporary partner, was smoking again and had a wicked grin on his face. He looked like a teenager after sex, if it wasn't for the gravity of the situation Montoya would've laughed. Gates was a tall man, just under six foot, with receding reddish-blonde hair swept back away from his face. He had a slightly freckled face and seemed his features were set in a permanent grin, one hand was in his brown trench-coat pocket whilst the other gestured as he spoke.  
"Pretty creepy huh?" Gates pointed at the body, Montoya didn't reply so he moved from his position leaning against the doorframe and moved to the body, getting his face only inches away from the body to examine it. "They do all look uncannily like Wayne don't they?"  
Montoya nodded and made an affirmative grunt, she was simply waiting. She didn't feel the need to engage the slightly smarmy detective in conversation.  
Gates grinned around his cigarette, his voice given a strange quality by having to talk around it, "Okay, I can see you want to be left alone. I'll let you meditate or whatever," he called over his shoulder as he left.  
The door slamming was accompanied by the sound she'd been awaiting, a quiet clearing of the throat. She turned to see the Batman stood behind her right shoulder.  
"I thought he'd never leave," she said with a smile, "my boys said they saw you come in here, what happened?"  
"Came in through the window." the Batman replied, sweeping silently across the floor to the body, "Saw the killer writing his message, he'd been here less than ten minutes. I engaged him, he fought using an old form of stage combat used in theatre. He out-manoeuvred me and leapt out of the window and down into the level below before I could catch up with him. The trail was cold by the time I followed him, I think the carpets are under-heated and I couldn't follow his heat signature."  
"So even the Batman isn't infallible…" Montoya mumbled to herself.  
The Batman ignored this remark and continued to look the body over.  
"Spot anything?" Montoya asked, she already found a few things but she was waiting to see what the Batman could come up with.  
Batman grunted and pointed to the position of the body on the table, "From my encounter with him, and the way the body was dropped onto the table the killer is a normal man, with average strength for somebody who engages in regular exercise. He's also Caucasian, I saw the bottom half of his face uncovered. He has acrobatic skills, similar to that of a skilled circus performer. He is definitely male. He is middle-aged and clean shaven. My earlier suspicions about his height were correct. From the state of the body's decomposition it was killed at roughly the same time as the first, most likely shortly after."  
"Thanks." Montoya said expecting to see the Batman disappear, but he didn't. "Something else?"  
"Don't worry about Wayne. I have one of my people looking after him."  
"I wondered why there was nobody home when my people went to look for him," Montoya replied, "his butler said he'd been called away on urgent business."  
The little of Bruce that was left in him after his parent's death smiled inwardly at that. The Batman nodded in understanding and handed a small black bat-shaped device, "If you need me press in the wings. As long as you have it I'll always be able to find you."  
Montoya put the device carefully into her pocket, ignoring the silent question in her mind of where these fantastic toys he had came from. Probably the JLA, they had an immense budget from somewhere. The Batman nodded, an almost imperceptible movement, before turning in a swirl of cape and leaping out through the window.  
Montoya moved to watch him go as the vigilante grabbed the edges of his cape to slow his descent as he landed on the nearby clock tower. Landing his black cape fell about him and he disappeared, a shadow at night amongst all the others that haunted the gothic architecture of Gotham. Montoya thought for a moment that it seemed she had earned the Batman's trust and respect, it was a reassuring thought. She pulled her radio out of her belt and up to her mouth, "Gates, I think I know where we have to start looking. Meet me in the lobby and we'll go back to Central."

-

The secret entrance to Oracle's workroom in the face of the clock tower slid aside and the Batman entered. He sat down heavily in Oracle's spare chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose through the cowl. Even though Oracle was one of the few privileged enough to know the identity of the man behind the mask he didn't take it off, that didn't happen until he got back to the morning at sunrise. The night was Batman's time.  
"Tough night?" Oracle asked.  
"I should've got him." There was no clarification necessary as Oracle knew exactly who he meant, "the second body was Walker, two men have died this week because of their association with Bruce Wayne, or the Batman. He was one step ahead of me. I wasn't ready for that."  
Oracle, who was really Barbara Gordon, the first Batgirl, wheeled herself over to him. She had been confined to a wheelchair for the past few years after losing the use of her legs to a bullet from the Joker. She put a hand out on his arm, "You're not omniscient Bruce, even you can be tricked or out-manoeuvred."  
The Batman shot up to standing again and the emotion was gone from the lower half of his face, his mask had truly come back up even though his cowl had never moved. Being called Bruce whilst in costume always did that, because at his heart he didn't think of himself as Bruce. He cleared his throat, the signal that the conversation was over and he wanted to get back on the job.  
"I want you to cross-check actors with circus or acrobatic experience, then pick out the ones with criminal records." Batman stepped over to the secret exit, "Also try and see if any of our suspects have a connection to Wayne Industries or to Bruce Wayne in particular. Call me as soon as you have anything." He said, and like that he was gone. The sound of a jump-line being fired even as the last sounds came from his mouth.  
"Will do." Oracle replied, over the cowl radio this time, as Batman was long out of earshot. She wheeled herself back to her computer array and brought up a website she didn't often have to look at, the IMDB.

-

The Batman found himself winding his way through the city to all the apartments owned by Bruce Wayne and resolved to sell a few and give the money to charity, even with his dual identity he didn't need nearly twenty apartments. All of them were luxurious and seldom used, the Batman preferred the solitude of his family mansion. One of the reasons he had so many is that the paparazzi who tried to catch him with the latest hot young starlet couldn't cover them all, so there was never any concrete evidence he was out every night. That was another reason he'd hired the actors. Now not only Church was dead, but Walker as well. Both of them were almost spitting images of Bruce Wayne, and both of them were found dead in an apartment he owned. As he made his way between his apartments he rigged them all with tamper-proof cameras, hopefully these would resist whatever dampening technology the killer had with him. If they worked then the next time he tried his body drop act, the Batman would be there waiting for him.

-

A tall black man walked into Montoya's office wearing a white shirt with a red tie and brown braces, he threw a newspaper onto Montoya's desk and slumped into the chair opposite her.  
"How did this stuff get out?" Commissioner Akins demanded from Montoya, obviously exasperated, "I'm pretty sure only the top brass knew the details of this case. Especially nobody knew these guys were all body doubles hired by Wayne, or at least nobody used to know. Now the whole freaking city is alive with fear for its favourite son."  
Montoya picked up the paper and looked at a picture they had of the bloody words, "What I'm wondering is how they got that picture. I certainly don't remember letting anyone in with a camera. Except Gates of course, his photos are different from these though." She pointed to the various crime scene photos arrayed on the desk.  
"Says the photographs and info came from an anonymous source," Akins replied, "anything stand out to you detective? Anything weird aside from the case itself?"  
"Batman." Montoya replied and saw the commissioner's face fall, "he's been at every crime scene either before or shortly after the drop, and he told me to stay away from Wayne himself."  
"Wayne?" Akins asked curiously.  
"Yeah, he said he had Wayne protected by one of his people. Not to interfere."  
Akins sat back in the chair and thought, "Send two uniforms over to guard Wayne. Have two on him at all times, tell them to report anything whatsoever." He saw Montoya's reluctance to abuse the recently-acquired trust of the Batman and strengthened his resolve, "That's an order detective."  
"Yes sir," Montoya said with a note of resignation as Akins left her office. She returned to perusing the newspaper, reading the headline aloud, "The Reviewer kills two Wayne Hired Impersonators." she paused and laughed a little to herself, "The Reviewer? Sounds kinda lame."

-

The killer carefully cut out the newspaper article about him, front page too. He stood up and with a self-satisfied smile pinned it to the board he had all his photos on.  
"Oh my god!" the man shouted at him, "How are you still free? This is the worst serial killer cliché I have ever seen."  
"Shut up," the killer said quietly.  
"I can't believe you just pinned up the newspaper clipping. What's next, obsessively photographing the detective involved?" This was followed by a short laugh from both men in the room. One of them more ironic than the other.  
The killer picked up a camera he had on a nearby table and brought it up in front of his face, "I always did like photographs. The one of number two I took was fantastic." He clicked the shutter and a flash illuminated his face for a moment, he lowered the camera and slowly went over and picked up a syringe full of death from the table, "now say cheese."

-

Author's Note: Okay, so these are becoming a nasty habit I'm going to try and break next chapter. No more lengthy author's notes. But anyway, I deviated a little from my formula this chapter as I didn't think how it was done really merited an action scene. If any of you want to get in the mood I'm in whilst writing it I suggest you listen to the Reanimation album by Linkin Park as that goes really well with it. Thanks for the review (singular), and I hope to get more as the story goes on. Also, it'd be cool to know who people's favourite Batman villains are, personally mine's Two-Face and I fully intend to do a decent story on him at some point. Although I do like the Riddler as well, and Joker. This is a very un-subtle hint that I really want to do a sequel if you guys want to read it! It'll hopefully be in the spirit of this, just a decent Bat-yarn. Please read and review.


End file.
